State of the Union? Give Your Workers a Raise!

We watched the State of the Union, and I thought about what it said and what I thought about our president. He sure knows how to choke up the crowd, the story of Corey the soldier is a tear jerker. Big applause, a proud moment for him, sitting next to Michelle. He symbolizes the war and we have to take a long time to clap and cheer to show how patriotic we are. He’s the vessel into which we are pouring our Patriotism.

Give them a raise. I love that he said that. Give your employees a raise, come on bosses. Imagine tomorrow morning when ten million workers walk into the boss and remind them of what the president asked them to do. It will be interesting to hear the chatter about this.

Peggy Noonan predicted that no one would be watching, or listening, or would hear about this speech. He doth talk to much, she thinks. But he said a few things that I have never heard a president say, and he was full of specifics. MY RA? The government’s new 401K program for minimum wage earners. The training programs across the nation working with Mayors and community leaders. It’s all coming together. Our numbers are dazzling, and Obama has a lot of good news to use.

Gun control isn’t on his mind any more, only two sentences. He is resigned to working without the Congress…he’s been burned too many times and had so many rancorous exchanges about the budget and his appointments, he’s going to have his lawyers working hard to find the acts he can pass, by executive order. His biggest flaw to me is his inability to make a deal with Boehner and others…why it is so hard to find that middle ground. He’s aloof, and he doesn’t try hard enough.

But I wish him well and I met someone who proved how important the Affordable Care Act was. She was just was able to change health insurance providers even though she has cancer, and go to the hospital with the specialist she needed to see. Getting, keeping and actually using health insurance makes most people agree with the President’s health care plans and the effort overall.

Max Hartshorne has been the editor of the GoNOMAD.com travel website since 2002. Over the past decade, he has had the privilege of working with writers and publishing travel articles about nearly every country in the world.
He has also been a consistent world traveler, writing hundreds of his own travel stories and posting daily blogs from the 10 or more yearly international trips he takes around the world.